Here the short summary of my first day working:
We arrived at the construction site early in the morning and met most of the family, the masons, and Constru Casa's construction coordinator. We were all being introduced to each other and then looked at the floorplan of the house which within 15 minutes was site-adapted and good to go. Quickest pre-construction meeting i ever witnessed :-) This is a view of the site with the active volcano Mt. Fuego in the background. The views from this valley are breathtaking.
The next image shows an existing four inch (ca. 10cm) concrete slab that we were to preserve as good as possible. That meant that we had to cut through it in order to prepare foundations. I was used to do work like that with powertools, but here it meant chiseling by hand and using a pickaxe to get the task accomplished. It took us the whole morning and was extremely hard. I am just not used to this kind of physical labor anymore! We got it done by mid-day and moved on to digging the footings for the house.
Here is a floorplan (windows and doors are approximated). Less than 350 Sq.Ft. for a family of seven!
By the end of the day we had all the footings dug out. It is a very satisfying feeling to get so much accomplished in a single day and to able to look at a before/after image and see all the changes that happened in less than eight hours of work! Tuesday the metal for the footings will arrive, which has to be cut, bent, wired and put in bebefore we start pouring concrete. I am sore, but excited for tomorrow!
wow, that a lot of work! keep it up man! really proud of you!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the warmth and watch out for the sun:)
ReplyDeleteCharlotte wants to know why that girl is sad!
ReplyDeleteShe also got upset with me for eating what she decided was your pancake this morning (there were 3 and she insisted the third one was for you) Know you are missed! :)
The pics are really exciting. THanks for getting them up!
I hope you brought some aspirin for muscle aches. :) It's amazing what we all take for granted. Have the parents and kids been stopping by? I thought Jim mentioned before that the father's are usually helping with construction?
ReplyDeleteAnne: The whole family is there all the time. One of the boys, i think he is 14, works with us all the time. He usually works construction during the week and goes to a school on the weekend! The father helped too sometimes and the kids come by to look after school all the time!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Ilja,
ReplyDeleteLife's very busy (but good) here so I only managed to read your blog today. Sooo exciting and it sounds very hard work, physically as well as mentally. What a great effort, well done! It is always good to be reminded how privileged we are! One question: Can you convert 350 square feet into square meters for me?
Your blog is also really well written. Thanks for explaining some architectural details so that even I can follow and in a way that is fun to read! (Just, what happened to those adverbs?)
Keep up the great effort and do let us know how we can support this great project. Say hi to the family, too.
TAke care, Larissa